Man vs Machine – The 'Endhiran' saga

'Sujatha' Rangarajan, a magnificent writer in the Tamil language showed his fascination for modernity with many of his works. The element of human life that is changing ever so rapidly thanks to technological advancements has been a subject of intense fascination for him. The late writer had written a script with the core of having an antagonist in the form of a Robot. He had even thought of having Kamal Haasan play the role. But then the script has been lying around for a long time with no takers as the film would involve a whopping amount if it has to see the light of day with the right effect. Along came a film director Shankar who had always made it a point to insist on Sujatha's talent in his films. After the huge success of 'Sivaji', Shankar was looked upon as a man who could churn out lavish films nationally. Sujatha Rangarajan's 'Robot' became a viable option when Sharukh Khan made public his desire to work with Shankar. The name 'Robot' was copyrighted by Shahrukh's production house Red Chilles. But then things fell apart as Shahrukh was not convinced totally with the project. Rajinikanth- Shankar combo had worded wonders at the box office and people were thirsting to see the two come together for another project and so the superstar was roped in for 'Robot'. Then came Aishwarya Rai into the picture. Shooting has begun for this film that went through a name change to 'Endhiran'. The 'supposed' story of 'Endhiran' has already surfaced and the following is probably what the film is all about. The film is about a scientist, played by Rajini who lives about 200 years in the future. He is passionate about making robots that have the ability to rationalize things. Designed to help humanity the robots are themselves like humans with many emotions. One such robot (played by Rajini again) is tampered upon by people of evil intent. And so this robot lives a life of its own putting humanity at risk. To boot to the mayhem this robot even falls in love with the scientist's girlfriend (played by Aishwarya Rai). The film is expected to be released in the summer of 2010. The story does sound interesting, but then we'll have to wait and see if the balance between modernity and traditional human emotions exists. Technical details are being worked out right now. Since the story was written by Sujatha a long time ago, the filmmakers have decided to add in the necessary updates. A team of about 250 people have been assigned the responsibility of researching these updates. 'We just would have needed one person in Sujatha to work on these updates. Since he is no more, we need 250 people to fill in for him', rues director Shankar.